Many television providers provide an electronic program guide (“EPG”) as a service to their subscribers. Initially, EPGs merely displayed a continuous listing of programs for subscribers on a specified channel. With advances in distribution systems, including especially the advent of digital distribution, EPGs became a navigational tool, allowing subscribers to select a program in the EPG to navigate to that channel (and/or set a recording for a future program). At the same time, many providers began adding additional information (such as detailed program information, promotional advertisements, etc.) to EPGs.
As a result, a typical EPG today generally provides a set of preprocessed data about current and/or upcoming programming. This data is loaded to the subscriber's set-top box (“STB”) in large files—generally as a batch process during late-night hours and the like—for displaying anytime the EPG is requested before the next batch update. This technique, however, does not provide a way to add real-time data to the TV screen once the EPG metadata file is loaded in memory. Changes need to be pushed to the STB for new data updates, severely limiting the ability for an EPG to contain dynamic or real-time information.
Hence, there is a need for more robust techniques to provide EPGs to subscribers.